Republicans Peddle Fear and Little Else on Day One of RNC 2016

July 19, 2016

Media Outlet: the Daily Beast

Shane Harris wrote for the Daily Beastabout the first day of the Republican National Convention:

Republicans kicked off their 2016 convention in Cleveland on Monday evening focusing on national security and promising to “make America safe again.” But the speeches—by TV celebrities, a former U.S. general, and Donald Trump’s wife—seemed designed to make Americans feel less safe.

The speakers mostly painted a picture of a dystopian America, where illegal immigrants commit violent crimes, President Obama is purposefully weakening the country’s borders, and Syrian refugee sleeper agents are trying to swindle their way into the United States to plot terrorist attacks.

Those talking points—which aren’t unique to the Trump campaign—surely resonated with many Republican voters, but the speakers offering them had little in the way of specific, concrete proposals for how their standard-bearer would reverse what they described as the Obama administration’s ruinous security policy at home and abroad.